Expansion Plans Change

[Villains0501]

Just out of curiosity, why did the initial plans for the Fantasyland Expansion change? Or, to put it more clearly, why did Disney choose to pull all of the added character meet and greets (Tremaine Chateau, Aurora's cottage, Pixie Hollow) in favor of the current plans? Was it due to a large amount of fan backlash? Was there a management shift in the Disney hierarchy? Was it too expensive? What was their reasoning and why did they choose to take the current course of action? Any thoughts?

P.S. Sorry for the possibly misleading thread title. I just needed an attention-grabber!

 

[Omegadiz]

I think it had something to do with the Staggs/Rasulo switch. Staggs prefered attraction over m&gs....I also think the fans played a part in it

 

[bethymouse]

I hope the fans made a difference!

 

[bubbles1812]

Backlash for one as you suggested. All Meet and Greets and no new rides didn't exactly sit that well with a lot of people, especially I think because everything was so "Princess themed." It was just a lot of "girl" stuff. Expense probably played a part in it as well (originally the expansion was supposed to be 800 million). I don't know if Staggs played a part in it but I'm at least thankful that whoever did make the final call for the change did it. I actually love meet and greets but I don't think the amount they planned for was necessary. I would always choose having a new ride over a M&G

 

[flynnibus]

Just out of curiosity, why did the initial plans for the Fantasyland Expansion change? Or, to put it more clearly, why did Disney choose to pull all of the added character meet and greets (Tremaine Chateau, Aurora's cottage, Pixie Hollow) in favor of the current plans? Was it due to a large amount of fan backlash? Was there a management shift in the Disney hierarchy? Was it too expensive? What was their reasoning and why did they choose to take the current course of action? Any thoughts?

P.S. Sorry for the possibly misleading thread title. I just needed an attention-grabber!

Iger swapped the CFO (Tom S.) and the current head of parks (Jay R.). Shortly there after, Tom Staggs decided the previously announced plan placated to girls too much and needed more balance - so they brought the Seven Dwarves Coaster back off the back burner and added that into the plan.. displacing most of the technology based Meet & Greets, Pixie Hollow, etc and in turn taking Snow White out in favor of repurposing that location as a new M&G location.

 

[Villains0501]

I figured it was probably a combination of all of those factors, but I just figured I'd ask everyone else for their opinion. I guess Disney does listen to its fans every now and then, which is good to know.

 

[TP2000]

It also helps that Staggs is a family man who is seen often at Disneyland with his kids. And all his kids are boys.

Rasulo has a family too, but they have no apparent interest in theme parks, Disney or otherwise. Jay Rasulo would go years without stepping foot in Disneyland, let alone making the trip all the way out to Florida. He just had no personal interest in theme parks and let spreadsheets and Powerpoint shows dictate what got put into the parks, instead of using some gut instinct in his decisions.

Tom Staggs may not be perfect, but he at least drives down the freeway from Burbank and visits Disneyland and DCA regularly with his family or with other executives, and seems to make at least an annual visit out to WDW. Staggs has a basic working understanding of Disney theme parks, and it looks like he made a gut instinct decision by scrapping Rasulo's first version of the Fantasyland re-do.

 

[flynnibus]

I figured it was probably a combination of all of those factors, but I just figured I'd ask everyone else for their opinion. I guess Disney does listen to its fans every now and then, which is good to know.

Check out..

Why we're glad we're not Orlando
The Florida version of the Little Mermaid is one of the few things still certain about the larger Fantasyland expansion that it’s a part of, which is a good thing as it’s the lone headliner for that project. With Tom Staggs now firmly in charge of Disney Parks and Resorts, the girl-centric Fantasyland expansion for Magic Kingdom that was very heavy on Princesses and very light on testosterone was called into question early this summer. The Beauty and the Beast restaurant and the Little Mermaid ride are still a definite go, but the girly Princess meet n’ greets are on thin budgetary ice now and subject to additional cuts, and the entire eastern half of the expansion that was to comprise a Dumbo area and a bigger version of Disneyland’s Pixie Hollow (with a Tinker bell version of Tow Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree coming to Carsland) has all been put into a holding pattern.
The Team Disney Orlando executives were already leery of the overall price tag, and so they are happy to oblige Tom with his request to step back and reconsider everything. Tom simply doesn’t think the overall plan gave the company the most bang for the buck, and as a father with three young sons, Tom wasn’t that impressed with the exclusively feminine components of the Fantasyland expansion there. All of this won’t impact the California version of the ride however, as Tom has given the thumbs up to continue spending the rest of the 1.2 Billion originally planned to be poured into DCA.

http://miceage.micechat.com/allutz/al080310a.htm

 

[Pixiedustmaker]

Boys & Girls will want to ride the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, especially since there is some sort of Snow White's cottage. I'm personally experiencing a slight change of heart with this ride, at first I was more than a little peeved that it only has a couple scenes, but then again, so does Grizzly Mountain in HKDL, and that ride looks moderately good. It won't be the big Fantasyland E-Ticket we imagined, but it will be better than the Great Goofini. The area around BOG looks fantastic, can't believe I'm more excited to see the restaurant and hang out in this area than any attraction in FLE . . .

Little Mermaid, at least in DCA, is heavily tilted in favor of guests who are already big Ariel fans, just replicating a couple scenes from the film which pleases mostly hardcore Mermaid fans who would be happy to see Ariel in any sort of ride. In terms of a general family attraction, the unfinished scenes, duplicate animatronics, and cheaply built last 1/3 of the ride is a turn-off for the general public who isn't blinded by Ariel's glitter and expect something a little bit better. I doubt Mermaid will be the star attraction, that duty falls on 7DMT . . .

Even with Staggs' changes, we've got story time with Belle and the Princess Fairytale hall, plus maybe Ariel and Snow White running around. That's more princess meet and greets than any other Disney theme park!

 

[Lee]

Even with Staggs' changes, we've got story time with Belle and the Princess Fairytale hall, plus maybe Ariel and Snow White running around. That's more princess meet and greets than any other Disney theme park!

And....that's a good thing?

 

[jt04]

And....that's a good thing?

Oh no, I am not wading into those waters again.

 

[Pixiedustmaker]

And....that's a good thing?

If you've got young girls in your family, maybe about 1/8 of all families coming to WDW do, then you'll be glad, if you care about the financial health of WDW, then you'll be glad. A lot of fan boys think that Disney is expanding on the whole pantheon of princesses thing to personally insult them or something, its a business decision plain and simple, its OK IMHO that something like this is in the park as some guests really love them, that is what it is about: pleasing the guests.

Yeah, they took out SWSA for the meet and greet, but let's face it: WDW doesn't care to create great new dark rides, or even take care of the ones they've got, it's a lost art form in a way. Mermaid is something new, more of a "showy" musical ride, at least in DCA, meant for primarily little girls and grown up girls who were in love the Little Mermaid when they were kids. It's really just an animatronic Meet and Greet for Ariel as the final show scenes are incomplete/unfinished/horrible looking, and the ride doesn't have a soul and story of its own, just a musical revue.

The last couple good new rides Disney made are Splash and Indy in Disneyland, haven't ridden Radiator Springs Racers, while its dark ride portion looks promising, the golden age of dark rides has ended. (Though the Haunted Mansion Holidays is probably my all time favorite ride ever).

Given Mermaids shortcomings, the lack of dark ride elements on Toy Story Midway Mania, and the new trend with 7DMT and Big Grizzly having just a couple show scenes, TDO/WDI wasn't capable of upgrading SWSA, or even building what everybody is dying for: a Beauty and the Beast Dark Ride.

Might as well use the space for something else if they were just going to let SWSA rot away.

Disneyland is different, you've got a great Fantasyland with a lot of cool dark rides with heart . . . something about Mermaid is just hideously unwieldly and heartless given the size and poor/unfinished scenes.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

It's still extremely girly.

 

[CinematicFusion]

This is from Jim Hill media and might explain a little...

PixiePal 225 recently wrote into say:

I've been following the Fantasyland expansion project at WDW's Magic Kingdom for a couple of years now. And while I love the level of design and attention to detail that I've been seeing in the completed portions of Storybook Circus, as a Tinkerbell fan, I have to admit that I find myself missing what was originally supposed to have replaced Mickey's Toontown Fair. Which was a full-scale walk-through mini-land celebrating Disney Fairies.


Given how popular the Disney Fairies franchise is, I was surprised when I learned that this portion of the Fantasyland expansion had been cancelled in favor of Storybook Circus. Is there a particular reason that the Imagineers made this change after they'd previously publicly announced Pixie Hollow?

To be blunt, PixiePal 225, there are two specific reasons that Pixie Hollows wound up getting nixed as Mickey's Toontown Fair's replacement. And both of them have to do with Disney CEO Bob Iger's November 2009 decision to have Tom Staggs and Jay Rasulo swap jobs. So that Disney's then-Chief Financial Officer would become Chairman of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts while the Head of Parks & Resorts would then become Disney's new CFO.


Now while Rasulo had been riding herd on the Fantasyland expansion project, Jay had wanted this new portion of the Magic Kingdom to wholeheartedly support two of the Company's biggest franchises, Disney Princess and Disney Fairies. Which is why -- in addition to Pixie Hollow -- Fantasyland was originally supposed to have had three NextGen Disney Princess meet-n-greets. Where Guests could have gotten face time not only with Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" but also with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.

But when Staggs came on board as the new head of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts ... Well, you gotta keep in mind that Tom has two relatively young sons. And when he was looking at the Fantasyland expansion project, he saw a $400 million addition to the Magic Kingdom that was pretty lopsided. Meaning that there was plenty here that would appeal to young girls but little or nothing that would attract small boys.


More to the point, Staggs -- in his former role as CFO -- was very aware of which stores at the Walt Disney World Resort generated the highest revenue. And given that County Bounty (i.e. that huge store which served as the post-show area for those super-popular character meet-n-greets which used to be offered to Guests in the Mickey's Toontown Fair portion of this theme park) was second only to the Magic Kingdom's Emporium in terms of highest-level-of-in-park-retail-sales ... Well, Tom really didn't like the idea of shutting down that terrific revenue stream just so the Imagineers could then build a full-sized version of the Pixie Dust Tree.

So Staggs reached out to the Imagineers and asked that they overhaul their Fantasyland expansion plans. Tom wanted WDI to take a far more balanced approach to this addition to the Magic Kingdom, making sure that there were rides, shows and attractions here that appealed to little boys as well as little girls. More to the point, Staggs ordered that the Imagineers find a way to keep County Bounty right where it was. So that once Fantasyland's facelift was completed, this super-popular store could once again still service the Guests who were visiting this theme park.


And given that County Bounty was housed in a giant tent-like structure ... Well, it didn't take all that much imagination on the Imagineers' part to use the County Bounty building as the new inspiration for a brand-new theme for this corner of the Magic Kingdom. One that would then drop Disney's storybook characters into a circus-type setting. More to the point, which would then allow County Bounty (with a brand-new name, mind you. Big Top Souvenirs) to remain in operation.

Luckily for the crew working on the Fantasyland expansion project, there was plenty of inspirational material to be found in WDI's concept art morgue. The Imagineers pulled a number of the pieces that had originally been created for Dumbo's Circusland (which -- appropriately enough -- had been an expansion of Disneyland's Fantasyland which had originally been designed back in the early 1970s but never greenlit) and used those as their jumping-off point.


As for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ... To be honest, this is another project that had been languishing for decades. I remember hearing Imagineers talk in the early 1990s about how this "Snow White" -themed runaway train ride would make a perfect addition to Euro Disneyland's Fantasyland during Phase II of the construction of that theme park. But then when Euro Disney opened in April of 1992 and failed to meet its financial targets, WDI was forced to rethink its original expansion plan for EDL's Magic Kingdom. And instead of building the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in order to increase that theme park's hourly ride capacity, they opted to go with the far-more-affordable Le Pays des Contes de Fées (i.e. the Storybook Canal Boat ride), Casey Jr. - Le Petit Train du Cirque and Les Pirouettes du Vieux Moulin (The Old Mill's Swirls).

Promising projects getting cancelled only to then be resurrected decades later as a possible addition to an entirely different theme park ... That's pretty much how Imagineering rolls, PixiePal 225. Which is why I wouldn't entirely lose heart here just because Tom Staggs opted not to build Pixie Hollow as part the Magic Kingdom's Fantasyland expansion.


After all, given the way things work at WDI, all of that Disney Fairies-themed concept art has now been placed in a file somewhere in WDI's morgue. And if you can just wait a decade or two (or three. Or -- in the case of Dumbo's Circusland -- four), that perfectly solid idea for a land and/or a set of attractions for a Disney theme park will eventually once again bubble to the surface.

The only problem is -- by the time the full-sized walk-through version of Pixie Hollow finally gets built -- you may have to buy a plane ticket to Brazil in order to be able to visit the Disney theme park where this Tinkerbell-themed area finally lands.


And -- no -- I'm not pulling that idea out of thin air. Go listen to that interview that Bob Iger did with Bloomberg TV's Carol Massar earlier this month and you'll hear Disney's CEO admit that The Walt Disney Company is looking towards Brazil as part of its international expansion plans.

But the upside is ... If you really are a Pixie Pal, PixiePal225, you can avoid purchasing a plane ticket for your flight by just hitting up Tink for a little pixie dust.

But seriously ... Don't give up on Pixie Hollow just yet. That idea for a new theme park land is just too solid. More to the point, given that Tony-nominated production of "Peter and the Starcatcher" which is now on Broadway (more importantly, given the movie version of this Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson book that Walt Disney Pictures recently put into development), it's not as if the Mouse is going to stop making trips to Neverland anytime soon.

So you just have to have a little faith, PixiePal225. Faith, hope and pixie dust.

 

[Pixiedustmaker]

Providing a link to the Jim Hill Media article,

http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_c...n-on-wdw-s-fantasyland-expansion-project.aspx

Is better as you can see some pretty cool pictures, and you're not "stealing" an article from Jim Hill and posting it elsewhere on the net.

 

[Bolt]

Just out of curiosity, why did the initial plans for the Fantasyland Expansion change? Or, to put it more clearly, why did Disney choose to pull all of the added character meet and greets (Tremaine Chateau, Aurora's cottage, Pixie Hollow) in favor of the current plans? Was it due to a large amount of fan backlash? Was there a management shift in the Disney hierarchy? Was it too expensive? What was their reasoning and why did they choose to take the current course of action? Any thoughts?

P.S. Sorry for the possibly misleading thread title. I just needed an attention-grabber!

I'll tell you one thing - building a roller coaster wasn't a cheaper solution to building a ton of meet and greets

 

[bubbles1812]

I'll tell you one thing - building a roller coaster wasn't a cheaper solution to building a ton of meet and greets

You sure about that? The original project was to cost 800 million (though I believe that actually had an "E ticket" in the plans as compared to now)... NFE as of now cost approx 400 million. Of course one meet and greet doesn't cost the same as a roller coaster, but several "nextgen" M&G might have. Just sayin'.

 

[unkadug]

You sure about that? The original project was to cost 800 million (though I believe that actually had an "E ticket" in the plans as compared to now)... NFE as of now cost approx 400 million. Of course one meet and greet doesn't cost the same as a roller coaster, but several "nextgen" M&G might have. Just sayin'.

Not even close. First of all you can't take the cost of "Nextgen" R&D into the equation because it will be used in other locations also. There is no way that even 10 M&G's would equate to the cost of the 7DMT

 

[bubbles1812]

Not even close. First of all you can't take the cost of "Nextgen" R&D into the equation because it will be used in other locations also. There is no way that even 10 M&G's would equate to the cost of the 7DMT

I'd say you could include the cost of the NextGen for just the things that were included in the original expansion, though I acknowledge that would probably be a harder thing to break down from the cost of NextGen as a whole. And I don't know...did you see some of the plans they had for the different M&Gs originally? They were pretty elaborate. That said, I only said "might," not that I know for certain. But there isn't a way to know for sure. That's all. (For the record I am very glad they chose to spend whatever money they did spend on a roller coaster rather than M&G)

 

[flynnibus]

The original M&Gs were going to be very elaborate - whole areas, buildings, and technology. And of course, you would expect duplication inside as well.

I expect the Snow White location to be done in the same fashion Town Hall was redone, but of course with the different theme. Very intricate, very detailed, high volume, FP, and probably pretty expensive because of all of it